Outsourcing Meaning: A Remedy for Absurdity and Existential Angst

When the universe offers no answers, religion steps in with meaning, comfort, and ritual — but not without questions and contradictions.

To outsource meaning is to relinquish the burden of self-authorship.

Arun Kumar

Summary: Here we explore the task of meaning-making and religious outsourcing as a solution. It examines how faith offers psychological relief and rituals to reinforce belief. In this paradigm, suffering and other awkward questions are rationalized by some means. We also acknowledge the limitations of such frameworks.

If your life affords the luxury of mental space to contemplate the relationship between your ephemeral existence and the universe, you are likely to encounter the unsettling realization of the absurdity of your situation.

This absurdity arises not only from the sheer disparity of scales — your fleeting presence in time and space set against the vastness of the cosmos — but from something more disquieting: the universe, which made your existence possible, offers no guidance on why you are here or whether there was any purpose behind your creation. It remains silent, indifferent, and unyielding to questions or inquiry for a meaning.

You come to realize that you have been thrust into an arena without being told the nature of the game, the rules of engagement, or the meaning behind the battles you are destined to fight. In those moments, you cannot help but mutter, “This is just absurd.”

From this realization of absurdity emerges existential angst — a diffuse yet persistent unease, a gnawing dread that the veil of meaning draped over your daily actions may fall at any moment to reveal that there is nothing behind. The routines you follow, the goals you pursue, the values you uphold, suddenly all begin to shimmer with uncertainty. You start to suspect that your choices, your rituals, your ambitions might be nothing more than an elaborate charade, performed on a stage whose audience is either absent, indifferent, or worse — distracted, scrolling through their smartphones. It is existential angst born of a missing narrative, a lack of direction in the unfolding progression of your life.

This confrontation with absurdity is not new. It reverberated through the works of Camus, Kierkegaard, and Sartre — each wrestling with the tension between human existence, our longing for meaning, and the universe’s persistent refusal to provide it. Across cultures and centuries, we have devised other responses to make getting out of bed manageable. Some responses are deeply personal, others collective and all center around easing the burden of our existential predicament by imbuing our life with meaning and purpose. One such creative response is to outsource the task of meaning-making to a designer: a being beyond us, imagined as capable of assigning purpose to the universe and to our place within it.

Outsourcing the Meaning of Our Existence

To outsource meaning is to relinquish the existential burden of self-authorship for crafting a personal narrative that imbues life with purpose; a task that is not trivial. Instead, one entrusts that responsibility to a higher intelligence. In this framework, the universe, and its evolution, is not a chaotic accident but a deliberate creation. Our existence is not incidental, but intentional. The designer — often referred to as God — is imagined as possessing capabilities far beyond human comprehension. This being not only created the universe but continues to guide its unfolding, keeping tabs on the bazillion intricacies that ripple across time and space and keeping it all moving along an envisioned trajectory.

This solution offers psychological relief. It transforms existential angst into belief. If our lives are part of a divine plan, then suffering carries purpose, injustice awaits resolution, and death is merely a transition rather than an end. The absurdity loses its sting, and the angst is soothed by the assurance of a meaning.

Organized Religion as a Manifestation of Outsourcing

This outsourcing of meaning forms the backbone of organized religion. Most religious traditions posit a creator who imbues the universe with purpose and provides moral guidance. Whether it is the Abrahamic God, the Brahman of Hinduism, or the Tao of Taoism, the designer — however conceived — is central to the religious worldview.

Religion institutionalizes the outsourcing of meaning. It offers rituals to reinforce belief, scriptures to codify purpose, and communities to sustain faith. The act of prayer, the rhythm of liturgy, the architecture of sacred spaces — often infused with the scent of incense to bring in a visceral feeling of some transcendental presence — serve to anchor the outsourced meaning in the fabric of daily life. Through faith, religion addresses questions that reason struggles to resolve, offering coherence where logic falters and comfort where uncertainty reigns.

But There Are Cracks

Yet the outsourcing solution is not without its awkward questions, and at times it stands on shaky ground requiring continuous reinforcement to sustain its foundation. If a designer created the universe, why is suffering so widespread? Why do inequality, injustice, and cruelty persist? Why is the world not a utopia? And more provocatively, why would such a being choose to create a universe at all? Was it a grand experiment, or a cosmic Colosseum for its entertainment?

Religious traditions offer a range of responses. Some frame suffering as a test of faith, a crucible for spiritual growth. Others interpret it as the consequence of free will (and making choices against the guidance from the deity) or karmic debt. Still others promise future rewards, enlightenment, and liberation for those who endure. The answers begin to resemble a progression through levels and challenges like in a video game, where each trial must be overcome to unlock the promised reward at the end.

These answers may offer comfort, but they also strain credulity. The scale and randomness of suffering defy tidy explanations. They raise the possibility that outsourcing meaning may be less a metaphysical truth than a psychological necessity, a construct designed to soothe, rather than to explain.

The Universal Accessibility

Despite its limitations, the outsourcing solution has been remarkably successful. If I were to wager, I would say that most people gravitate toward it for reasons of birth or social conditioning. After all, how else can we explain the geographic clustering of religious affiliation, where vast populations converge around the same spiritual framework? Many adopt this path without ever undergoing the existential journey, without muttering “this is absurd,” or feeling the angst that often follows such a realization. Only a fraction of the population is born again, finding faith as a solution after searching (and failing) elsewhere.

Its universality suggests that it may be the easier option — more accessible, more socially reinforced, and less cognitively challenging. Unlike the do-it-yourself model, which requires philosophical introspection and existential courage, outsourcing can be adopted passively. One can be born into a religious tradition, inducted through family and culture, and never confront the abyss of absurdity directly.

This accessibility has advantages. It allows meaning to be inherited rather than invented. It offers a ready-made narrative that can be personalized without being constructed from scratch. It provides a sense of belonging, a moral compass, and a cosmic context, all without demanding existential struggle and heroism.

Recap

Outsourcing meaning to a designer is a clever, and a widely successful human response to the realization of absurdity and the existential angst that follows. It offers comfort, coherence, and community. It transforms the silence of the universe into the voice of a god.

To outsource is to choose faith over doubt, mystery over clarity, and belonging over solitude. It is a valid choice, and for many, a deeply comforting one. Who are we to judge the soundness of this path, when the universe offers no absolute yardsticks for judgment and leaves the task to us? Just as it is reasonable to embrace faith, it is equally valid to pursue other paths to rein in absurdity and soothe existential angst.

The choice is yours to make.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.